Responsible for driving and supporting the delivery of DevSecOps-focused work to our Federal customers. Provides strategic, architectural, in-depth solutions, and consulting skills to Steampunk clients and teams.

Alan Crouch serves as the Federal Account Manager at Covers managing the growth and delivery of Coveros’ programs with customers like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He drives employee and client engagement at his programs and provides direction and assistance to the overall company in core service offerings, value proposition, and growth strategy. Alan has 15 years of experience building secure, reliable software with federal agencies and private companies to build and test systems using agile software development, cloud technologies, test automation, and DevSecOps. He has a track record of delivering excellent solutions for some of the most complex software programs and turning around failing software programs as a consultant and coach. He has a Master’s Degree in Secure Software Engineering from James Madison University and is a frequent speaker at Agile and DevOps conferences across the U.S. In addition, he’s an author for Agile and DevOps communities including, Agile Connection, Techwell Insights, and Better Software Magazine.

As a Senior Consultant at Coveros, I apply my breadth of multiple technical disciplines to lead IT Consulting projects and deliver critical business needs to my clients. I have applied my expertise in IT Security, DevOps, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Quality Assurance, Test Automation and Software development to multiple projects to enhance an organization's security posture, develop more secure, efficient systems and improve the System Development Lifecycle through automation. I consistently look at improving process and testing of software as an Agile coach and mentor, working directly with client teams to increase the quality of delivered products and decrease time to release. I have experience improving the development practices of organizations large and small through Continuous Integration, Test Automation, Continuous Delivery and DevOps.At Coveros, I've been privileged enough to work with clients in the public and private sector. I have helped ensure FISMA Compliance, provided Application Security Test Automation, produced application security testing reports, tested mobile applications, built and maintained Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery Pipelines and developed organization security document, policies, and procedures. I have strong experience building DevOps pipelines with such tools as Jenkins, Chef, AWS, Puppet, Selenium, Fortify, OWASP ZAP, Docker, Gradle, and Maven.Clients have included:Fannie MaeBytecubedSBD2Department of Homeland Security - USCISHealth and Human Services - CMSNational Cancer InstituteQTraxSymantecCoreInformaticsTreaterCGI

National Science Foundation (NSF) IT Support Services ContractAs the acting team leader for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Vulnerability Management Team, Mr. Crouch supports the NSF by providing a variety of information security functions to reduce risk to the NSF IT Infrastructure. He is well versed in Federal Government regulations and laws, including NIST and FISMA guidelines. Mr. Crouch conducts vulnerability detection and analysis, monitors patch levels, develops reports/audits, coordinates with system administrators to mitigate vulnerabilities and verifies successful remediation. He is additionally called upon to write and test enterprise-wide remediations for systems across the NSF. He has performed controlled penetration testing on Major Applications and General Support Systems. Recently, he developed a web-based system (Prometheus) to manage vulnerability data in real time. He currently supervises new members as well as providing technical guidance to the Certification and Accreditation team. In addition to his technical role, Alan has written white papers that range from Application usage to IT Security Policy. He serves as a core member of the Division of Information Systems (DIS) Desktop Management Team and is given a wide latitude to develop and implement procedures to improve NSF’s security controls. He has been integral in writing Security Policy and planning of activities. He currently also severs on Firewall Management Teams, and is an integral member of pilot projects ranging from custom applications, Windows 7 Migration, and Mobile Device support and integration. Mr. Crouch has received several commendations from NSF Senior Management for his work on the DIS IT Security Team. IBM has also recognized him as one of the highest performers for the past two consecutive years.

From August 2007 – May 2008, Mr. Crouch presented Security Awareness Training and training in new technologies to faculty and staff at JMU. Mr. Crouch supervised student development programs and advised students in areas of education, recruitment, retention and handled public relations for his department. He created, developed and administered six leadership conferences throughout the school year that were attended by nearly 600 students.

He worked with the ERAM (En Route Automation and Modernization) Project for the Federal Aviation Administration. While on the ERAM project, Alan worked with a large number of developers, testers, and architects employed by various contractors in a CMMI Level 5 environment. Alan was brought on to develop new software modules for components requested after the projects initial development. He designed, coded, validated and verified code in over 100 components. In addition to developing components, Alan was tasked with unit-testing several hundred components for Interfacing Proxies to determine logic correctness and security.

While working for MyDatabus, LLC. Alan was the lead software developer and after training three other developers transitioned into the role of usability and security tester. Alan planned, developed and instituted methodologies and systems to provide feedback from users. In addition, he tested web services for correctness and quality assurance as well as providing application scanning and vulnerability testing through third party tools and custom scripts. Mr. Crouch designed and developed new software modules for all company hosted web-services and later integrated those services with off-site data centers.

Mr. Crouch provided help-desk support, systems development, and network operations support to Digital Resources, a Data-Backup and Service Recovery provider. Alan worked with hundreds of clients and implemented systems for storing data for HIPPA Compliance and small business financial transactions. He designed and developed PHP/MySQL web services for managing accounts and keeping track of internal finances. In addition he worked applying the same data-backup model and service for college-students, working with local universities to recruit new clients and market services.